ONE LAW FOR ALL AND PEACE FOR ALL

“Had we acknowledged that we built modern Israel on stolen land and that 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled: had we made some effort at, reparations: had we treated Palestinians with the same rights as we treat Israeli Jews: had there been one law for all people, as taught by Leviticus 24.22, it is much more likely that so much of this violence could have been prevented …How much money has the US given to Israel for weapons and military security? These funds need to go towards reconciliation, towards working for a genuine lasting peace in Palestine and Israel…The Israeli people will have to come to an accommodation with the Palestinian people sooner rather than later. Dismissing them as terrorists will not work…The Palestinian lawyer and writer Raja Shehadeh wrote that ‘without peace with the Palestinians, Israel can never live in peace’.”

Letters from the Guardian.

1066 EXPOSE THE NARROW MINDED IGNORANCE OF XENOPHOBES

“The Normans were Vikings who had only settled in northern France two or three generations prior to 1066… Anglo-Saxons were invaders from northern Europe…with regard to Scotland the indigenous people were called Picti by the Romans…’Scots’ was the name of invaders from the south-west from Ireland… This complex intermixing of people of different geographical origins serves to show that the right wing racialist position on immigration is both ignorant and illogical.”

Roy Musgrove
Letter in national press.

THE POISON GENERATED BY THE TORIES

“The Home Office has allowed its backlog of refugee status applications to grow so large that it now needs around 400 hotels to accommodate those stuck in limbo. At the same time as ministers such as Priti Patel and Sella Braverman have tried to dehumanise asylum seekers by peddling appalling language and downright untruths, they are also putting them into communities with next to no consultation or preparation. The result is often to stir up local resentment towards vulnerable people – which can then be inflamed further by a footloose and cynical far right.

A textbook example is Llanelli, where six months ago the town’s finest hotel was taken over to house 240 asylum seekers. Around a hundred staff were laid off and contractors began gutting the building. Residents organised a protest camp outside that was visited by a number of extremists. The virus of far-right hate entered a Labour stronghold. This week, the government announced it was dropping the plan – and the racists claimed that as their victory.”

The Guardian Editorial.

CHILD POVERTY WAS ONCE A POLITICAL PRIORITY BUT NOT ANY MORE

Labour must abolish the two-child limit on benefits.

“Progress made on tackling child poverty during the first decade of this century under Labour has been reversed.

By 2021, an additional 350,000 children were living in relative poverty (defined as households that have 50% less than the average income).

George Osborne led the charge with his two-child limit on benefits, which came into effect in 2017. It has pushed larger families, more than half of whom are in work, in to deeper poverty affecting 1.5 million children.

A more generous benefits system is urgently needed. The future Labour government should also look to raising wages in low-paid sectors, building an affordable childcare system so that parents can access employment, and providing a sustainable solution to escalating housing costs that, are pushing renters into poverty “.

The Guardian Editorial.

THE NHS IS THE TOP PRIORITY

“Don’t be fooled by the brochures and promises of private health care companies, whose profits are bolstered by a struggling NHS, which also helps them manage their failures. Private companies take their doctors from the same pool as the NHS, and so outsourcing NHS services to private companies just makes it harder for the NHS to recruit, and costs the tax payer more in the end…In the mid-90s, the feeling in the NHS was the same: a burned-out exhausted workforce was fed up with working in a failing, underfunded service. Patient dissatisfaction was at an unprecedented high, when, in 1997, there was a change of government. The voters demonstrated decisively that they wanted their politicians to put the NHS back at the top of their priorities, and tax payers’ money flooded in. Morale among doctors, nurses and and allied professionals began quickly to rise, and patient satisfaction, too; within a few years of the change, studies were being published that put the NHS among the most effective and efficient healthcare services in the developed world”.

Gavin Francis, an Edinburgh GP.

THE CLASS STRUGGLE :  A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE.

Excerpt from a protest pamphlet, circulated in 1641, during the period often described as ‘The English Revolution’: “A yeoman of £100 a year is rated at £5. But a landowner of £1,000 is rated at only £20. And a landowner of £10,000 is rated at only £100.”

(Note: Today, Council Tax is also unfairly weighted against the less wealthy. The class struggle is still going strong!!)

CERTAINLY THE FOCUS SHOULD BE ON REDISTRIBUTION

In swathes of central Europe and beyond, the inability of mainstream centre-left parties to forge coalitions of voters that include older, less well-off, less well-qualified votes has become marked. A series of seismic shocks, from the 2008 crash to the war in Ukraine, has unleashed economic insecurity on a grand scale. As with Law and Justice in Poland, Smer-SD’s election pitch in Slovakia successfully combined illiberalism with a generous welfare offer that resonated outside the cities. The accumulating body of evidence suggests that to combat the kind of insular, divisive political template that allowed Mr Fico to prosper, a focus on redistribution as well as rights is needed.

The Guardian Editorial.

SOME IN THE CITY SEEM TO ACCEPT THAT THE PENDULUM SHOULD SWING BACK TOWARDS THE WORKERS

“The big difference between the current environment and previous downturns is the strength of the labour market. Demographic trends are now firmly supportive of labour… After 40 years in which the pendulum swung firmly away from labour towards capital, it may be no bad thing that it is beginning to move back. Demographic trends and an ageing society demand it. If companies have to invest more in their employees at some cost to their margins, but society in aggregate is better off, that’s not a bad outcome”.

Richard Buxton, Investment Manager at Jupiter Asset Management
The Sunday Times